Another day, another statement from the Pope to make right wing-types tear out their last, sparse remaining hairs: at a rally in Turin, Italy, the pope condemned weapons manufacturers, suggesting they can’t consider themselves Christians. »6/22/15 10:50am 6/22/15 10:50am

A new Vatican document has denounced plastic surgery, calling it "aggressive" and saying it threatens "the feminine identity, showing a refusal of the body." The same document also lumps in abortion with female genital mutilation and rape as things that harm women, just in case you were worried the Vatican was… »1/30/15 11:30am 1/30/15 11:30am

Pope Francis just turned 78. In celebration, a bunch of followers sang happy birthday in several languages and also danced the tango en masse. Just a chill birthday for the chill pope. »12/17/14 3:30pm 12/17/14 3:30pm

The Vatican might have that cool new Pope, but the rest of the operation is business as usual: a Vatican official told an Italian news agency that 29-year-old Brittany Maynard, the terminally ill 29-year-old who died by assisted suicide over the weekend, committed a "reprehensible" act. »11/04/14 4:50pm 11/04/14 4:50pm

On Monday, #chillpope kicked off a big two-week Vatican summit about the Catholic family. Popping by to speak to the gathering were Ron and Mavis Pirola, an Australian couple with 55 years of marriage under their belts, who informed the assembled celibates that, yeah, sex matters. A lot. »10/07/14 5:20pm 10/07/14 5:20pm

In the latest play in the Vatican's strict two-year crackdown on those American rebel brutes known as nuns, the Cardinal Ludwig Müller (who I will just assume vaguely resembles George Mueller, from Boardwalk Empire) has taken a rather frank stance with the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), the… »5/06/14 1:40pm 5/06/14 1:40pm

The new issue of Vanity Fair features a story called "The Secret Gay Life of the Vatican: Inside a Hidden Netherworld of the Catholic Church." While the full piece is not online, there's an excerpt on the VF website with two really great quotes. »10/31/13 4:00pm 10/31/13 4:00pm

Catholics who click on to the pope's Twitter feed on Catholic World Youth Day — a week-long event* that starts on July 22 — will gets an "indulgence", which is basically a get out of purgatory free card. The more you get, the faster you get the heck out of that hell-ish hole and straight up to the big dog's ice cream… »7/17/13 11:30pm 7/17/13 11:30pm

If you're monitoring your news feed today, you might get to watch Rev. Tony Flannery, a 66-year-old Irish Catholic priest with no threshold for doctrinal bullshit, throw down a serious gauntlet against the Vatican when he defies orders from Vatican authorities not to speak out about his advocacy for a more open-minded… »1/20/13 12:30pm 1/20/13 12:30pm

The beautiful mug of the most handsome Jesus wizard in the Vatican, Georg Ganswein, has graced the cover of Italy's Vanity Fair, proof either that the Catholic Church is trying to glamour Italians into becoming more religious, or that good-looking people really do have a professional leg-up on the rest of us uggos. »1/17/13 1:15pm 1/17/13 1:15pm

Women go topless to protest the Vatican's opposition to gay marriage in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican, Sunday, Jan. 13, 2013. Police quickly took the women away, and the Pope appeared not to have been disturbed as he delivered his traditional prayer from his studio window overlooking the piazza. On their bare…»1/13/13 12:30pm 1/13/13 12:30pm

I think we'd all like to believe that, sitting next to a reading lamp and swaddled in his Holy Snuggie somewhere deep inside the Vatican's intestinal labyrinths, Pope Benedict Palpatine Vader XVI read The Casual Vacancy with a mounting sense of disappointment that Harry Potter didn't make at least a cameo appearance.… »11/04/12 6:01pm 11/04/12 6:01pm

The Vatican's daily newspaper has called for Mattel to start selling its recently-introduced line of bald Barbies, which were introduced earlier this year following a prolonged Facebook campaign started by the mother of a young girl who underwent chemotherapy. Mattel currently donates the bald doll to hospitals, but… »8/19/12 5:00pm 8/19/12 5:00pm

American nuns, fed up with the Vatican's dissent-squelching bullshit, have fired back at the Pope and his cronies, arguing that cracking down on holy ladies who question the teachings of the Church undermines the entire purpose of Catholicism as an evolving, living faith. Okay — those last two details in the headline… »6/19/12 12:55pm 6/19/12 12:55pm

Change has come to the Catholic Church. After centuries of accusing women who disagree with them of witchcraft, they've abandoned their antiquated ways and embraced a more modern way of thinking — accusing women who disagree with them of "radical feminism." And you say the Church isn't progressive! »6/08/12 2:40pm 6/08/12 2:40pm

An American nun who wrote a book about sex that praised female masturbation has been accused of promoting a "radical feminist agenda" by officials of the Catholic Church, an organization that knowingly and willfully protected pedophile priests from prosecution and is the proprietor of a bank that's US officials have… »6/05/12 1:50pm 6/05/12 1:50pm

Well, the good news is that a prominent member an order of priests notorious for child abuse hasn't himself abused any children. The bad news is that he broke his vow of chastity by fathering a child with a woman. The Vatican is pissed. Progress? »5/16/12 11:50am 5/16/12 11:50am